May 15, 2011

PAWTUCKET â€” Baseball scouts usually sit in the best seats minor league stadiums have to offer, a few rows behind home plate. They come armed with the tools of their trade â€“ radar guns, stopwatches and â€ścheat sheetsâ€ť that record the data of players down on the field.
â€śThe radar gun is mainly used to measure the speed of pitches,â€ť Chicago White Sox scout Gary Pellant was saying on Sunday afternoon at McCoy Stadium. â€śIâ€™ve seen some scouts use them on infielders, to see how strong their arms are. Amateur scouts do that because they watch a lot of high school players who change positions.â€ť

May 15, 2011

EAST GREENWICH â€” The diagnoses were dire and the prescriptions painful for addressing Rhode Islandâ€™s economic woes at an Operation Clean Government forum on Saturday.
The event featured the brief return of the always colorful and often combative Steven Laffey to Rhode Islandâ€™s fiscal and political fray. Laffey, the former mayor of Cranston and 2006 U.S. Senate candidate who has since decamped to a ranch in Fort Collins, Colo., apparently hasnâ€™t learned to mince his words since moving out west.

May 15, 2011

LINCOLN â€” It's been a long time coming, but old friends Ed Fox and Joe Buss finally have a date for the presentation of a Vietnam Veterans Memorial monument. It's something in which the duo have dreamed for the town for at least four decades.
On Saturday, May 21, at 1 p.m., the two Lincolnites will unveil the granite memorial â€“ which now stands covered by a black nylon, Prisoner of War flag-like material knitted by Fox' wife, Patty â€“ during a ceremony outside The Center (for seniors) on Jenckes Hill Road.